WHO COMES AFTER US?

Who Comes After Us? is a yearly multidisciplinary event inspired by and in the spirit of Uri Katzenstein. Katzenstein was a radical artist whose work was typified by unique, uncompromising connections between performance, sound, video, and sculpture. In his work he frequently engages with essence of human existence in the world, the anomalies within it, and the presence of the body, its wounds, and its distortions. Katzenstein repeatedly pushed the boundaries of medium, and paved new ways for numerous artists who came after him.

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The event seeks to create a community of artists continuing in his spirit, and to constitute an annual gathering place for artists working between media boundaries and on the experimental forefront. It includes performances, and performance, sound, video, and mixed media works by various artists.

“Who comes after us?” is posed as an open question to the artists and the audience, and as an invitation to engage with the change and evolution of human life, with the possibility of imagining new realms, and to experiment and push boundaries. This echoes French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, who in 1991 asked scholars and philosophers “Who comes after the subject?” This question attempted to capture a key moment in Continental Philosophy, what is known as “Death of the Subject” in the postmodernism of the mid-twentieth century. Thirty years later, the present project invites broad thinking about a potential change in the meaning of being human in the present and future, given the changes humanity has been undergoing in recent decades; changes stemming from ecological, social, and political crises coupled with rapid technological developments, connection to digital spaces, and changing perceptions of human life, such as post-humanism that imagines a changing or substituted humanity arising from global and local contexts. These issues occupied Katzenstein in many of his works, and influenced how he sought to address a future community.

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Artistic Directors: Udi Edelman and Shimrit Gil

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The event was made possible thanks to generous donations of the Danziger Family, Rivka Saker, and Uri Katzenstein’s family.